Posts Tagged ‘Branding’

Almost everyone in America knows what YouTube is and that you can find almost anything on it to entertain yourself. What you may not know is that it is becoming the new search tool of the Millennials (Generation Z); rather than words, they want video answers to their questions.

Why Video Marketing?

If we think about our past, it isn’t surprising that we are drawn to the visual relay of information – a picture paints 1000 words, right? So a video must communicate a million, easy. It is one of the fastest ways to share and ingest pieces of information between human beings. It’s why commercials cost more than other forms of advertising. Technology has allowed each of us to share our own personal cave wall art with everyone in the world who has access to the internet. What IS surprising is that although this powerful medium has become advanced enough that you can make a video from your phone and post it online in mere minutes; there are few businesses that have truly committed to using it to its full potential.

It’s Easy to Use

It is an amazing time to be a business – especially a tech-savvy one! If you have a marketing department or an advertising agency that is already creating fantastic commercial quality videos for your company, feel free to repurpose them and upload them to a company YouTube channel or a Vimeo account, which both offer easy sharing options to social media platforms. If you don’t have access to commercially produced video footage, there are dozens of options for video recorders that are relatively inexpensive, simple to use, and a breeze to upload.

How do I make it Effective?

If you are making the video, or you have the ability to give direction to those who are, remember that online there are many distractions and it is important to grab your audience’s attention immediately and then keep them watching your ad. Recent research, by Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Thales S. Teixeira, shows that the best attention capture is achieved when there is:

… a quick element of surprise at the beginning of an ad, followed by a longer period of joy…

Now that you know the formula, you can get busy making surprising, joyful videos that capture the attention of your audience. Just remember it is always important to be authentic and real about your product or service, even while you make viewers feel good.

If you would like some help in your video marketing endeavors, feel free to call us at 775-322-3663 today.

Proprietary Websites

Proprietary websites are everywhere; they offer cheap website designs and often, cheap hosting as well. However, there are free or open source options that provide much better benefits. There are a multitude of issues that come with this type of website platform – our top 5 are below:

Limited Design & Branding Options

No Ownership or Flexibility

No SEO Options

No Search Engine Respect

No Support

1. Limited Design & Branding Options

You are limited to the color palates, lay out templates, and widgets that they have available.

There are thousands of websites out there – and probably hundreds of businesses that do something similar to yours. So how do you stand out? Being online is important – including social media (but we’ve gone over that before); however, it doesn’t help to distinguish yourself when your website looks like everyone else’s. Your business is unique in some way, shape or form – show that to your clients!

2. No Ownership or Flexibility

You do not own your proprietary website – the creator does. If you want to move your site or use a different designer, you have to start from scratch. This is frustrating and costly as the services you have already paid for basically disappear and are wasted. You cannot take it with you when you leave – and if something happens to the business that created your proprietary website – you lose everything.

3. No SEO Options

Most websites are being created so people (clients or customers) can find them and buy the service or product you sell. The way a website is found by most people is through searching. We enter keywords or terms we think apply to our topic and a list of relevant websites is returned to us. These keywords or terms are coded into the back end of every webpage. Without them, your website can only be found by someone who has the exact address – so they already know you and your website.

These proprietary websites often have no way for you to set up your SEO (search engine optimization), which means no one will find your website unless you tell them how to get there. No searches will return your company and your website is pretty much useless for bringing in new clients.

4. No Search Engine Respect

If, by some miracle, your proprietary website has a special upgrade or ‘pro plan’ that will give you SEO options (for a price), you need to know one last thing: Search Engines can tell who built your website, and they don’t love proprietary site builders. If your search engine doesn’t respect your website, you are not likely to end up at the top of your target client’s search results; which means unhappiness for your business rather than increased sales and a bright new outlook on the future growth of your company and cash flow.

5. No Support

Let’s face it – things go wrong- and when they do, a great portion of our satisfaction with a service is the ability of the offender to make it right again. Most of these proprietary websites have clunky forms, round-a-bout ways to contact them, or no human response whatsoever. When your company reputation or your personal one depends on how you respond, you need to know that you have fast, reliable support available. This is usually not the case with a proprietary website – if you can find a way to contact them, they are not usually very efficient and an emergency on your part does not an emergency on their part make.

Our Recommendations

We have been designing and developing websites for many years – and we have learned that open source platforms are the most user-friendly, wholly owned, SEO ready, massively supported and unique option for websites today.

Platforms like WordPress, Joomla!, and Drupal make creating a customized, branded experience for your customers a simple, straight forward, and effective process for your business.

Call us today at 775-322-3663 to learn more about how Integris Marketing can help your website work for you!

You have probably heard before, how important it is to brand your company and build authority through social media. However, some businesses are not ready or able to commit the kind of time and personnel it takes to manage a full-force online marketing campaign for their brand. There are also some barriers to internally managing these platforms; according to Towers Watson research, the main factors which prevent organizations from being able to implement needed solutions are:

Limited Knowledge of Social Media

Lack of IT Support or Technical Capability

Limited Staff/Resources to Implement

Restrictions imposed by The Company’s Legal Department

Lack of CEO or Senior Management Support

Lack of Metrics to Measure Impact

This is where out sourcing can help your brand reach its online marketing goals. At Integris Marketing, we are external experts with expertise in managing social media for business purposes. We know how powerful these platforms can be, but we also know that they must be customized to work well for your brand.

Our extensive social media knowledge and technical experience will ensure that we are able to advise you on the platform that will work best for you and your brand. Our resources are very flexible, which allows us to reallocate resources to projects as needed. We start every project off by looking at the current data for your brand, then crafting a plan that we can implement with your full support.

Some of the areas of social media that we can assist you with, include: Blogging (enhances all website content and drives internet search traffic by improving SEO); Social Bookmarking and News (can also dramatically increase website traffic by improving SEO); Social Networking (i.e. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn); Visual and Audio Social Networking (i.e. YouTube, podcasts, and photo-sharing); or even Building your own Social Network. Any posts we create for your brand will be subject to your approval in order to avoid any issues with legality and to maintain the tone that makes your brand unique.

To get started with your brand’s social media presence using a data-driven professional process, call us at (775) 322-3663 or (800) 233-0239, or contact us with your inquiry.

With the plethora of choices in today’s marketing arena, our clients often ask us, “what works?” We have a straightforward answer. It depends. Return on Investment (ROI) in the various marketing venues depends on your business and more specifically, on your customer.

You’ll find when you work with us that one of the first things we’ll do is gather data. We want to know what’s working now, and what’s proving to be a waste of money. We will use this data to find the path ahead and to provide the most relevant and accurate suggestions for your hard earned dollar.

We also pinpoint your potential customer. You’ll hear us talking again and again about who your customer is. We’ll be marketing directly to those customers, both current and potential. Your customers determine the venues we choose to market your company. Your customer, in fact, is king and queen of almost all of the decisions we make – even down to the color of your logo.

The most important thing for you to know about marketing your product in the many available venues is that the whole is greater than the parts. The aggregate solution for you is almost guaranteed to be a highly custom mix of marketing venues.

When we build your brand, we build it like no other.

You’ll find that when we build your brand, it is uniquely yours in look, feel, voice and in choice of venues.

So if you are looking for a cookie-cutter type website, we may not be the choice for you – but if you want to stand out above your competitors, and get the customers you know you can impress – then we are looking to help you build your brand. Call us today at 775.322.3663, or fill out our request form for more information. We look forward to hearing about your brand and your customers.